Nebraska fires Callahan after 5-7 season

Sunday

Nov 25, 2007 at 12:40 AMNov 25, 2007 at 6:01 AM

The Associated Press

LINCOLN, Neb. - Bill Callahan was fired as Nebraska's coach Saturday, his four-year stay marked by the most embarrassing losses at a football program once among the mightiest in the nation.
Interim athletic director and Nebraska great Tom Osborne announced the dismissal one day after the Cornhuskers ended the season at 5-7 following a 65-51 loss at Colorado. They squandered an 11-point halftime lead by allowing 34 consecutive points.
Osborne said that at the end of October he told Callahan there would be a coaching change if Nebraska finished with a losing season.
The dismal results came one season after the Huskers reached the Big 12 championship game. This year also was marked by a 76-39 defeat at Kansas, the most points allowed by a Nebraska team.
It will cost the university more than $3.1 million to buy out Callahan's contract, which was to run through the 2011 season.
Callahan came nowhere near meeting the high standards for Nebraska football established by Osborne, who won 255 games and three national championships in 25 seasons before retiring after the 1997 season.
The names most often mentioned as possible replacements are LSU defensive coordinator Bo Pelini and University of Buffalo head coach Turner Gill.
Pelini was Nebraska's defensive coordinator in 2003 and proved extremely popular among fans, who chanted "We want Bo" after he led the Huskers to an Alamo Bowl win over Michigan State as interim head coach following the firing of Frank Solich.
Gill, a longtime assistant under Osborne and Solich, was the Huskers' quarterback in the early 1980s and a Heisman Trophy runner-up in 1983.
OLE MISS: At Jackson, Miss., Ed Orgeron was fired as Mississippi's coach, a day after the Rebels blew a game against their big rival to finish the season 3-9 and go winless in the conference for the first time since 1982.
His departure ends a tumultuous three years in Oxford that included plenty of bravado but few wins. The ouster came after Friday's difficult loss in which a fourth-and-1 call by Orgeron started a 17-point rally by Mississippi State that ended in a 17-14 defeat after it appeared Ole Miss had won.
The Rebels lost five of their last six games, and this season put 20 players on probation for stealing from hotels.
Orgeron went 10-25 in his first job as head coach. The school will pay Orgeron 75 percent of his $900,000 salary through 2009. Calls to his home and cell phone were not immediately returned.